TechSmart 121, October 2013 TechSmart 123, December 2013 | Page 18

SAMSUNG

REVIEW

Galaxy Gear

Wearable tech is forecasted to be the
next big thing, but unfortunately Samsung’s Galaxy
Gear smartwatch’s time has not yet come.

O

nce you’ve downloaded the Gear
manager application from Samsung’s
App marketplace to your phone, and
paired the Gear with your smartphone via
NFC/Bluetooth, you’re ready to go. In essence the Gear acts as a second screen for
your smartphone, by displaying notifications,
received email, SMS and the like, which you
can read but not reply to from the watch.
Unlike its rivals, the Gear elevates the smartwatch game thanks to sporting a camera,
built-in speaker, plus two microphones (one
is used for noise cancellation). The watch’s
1.9 MP autofocus camera captures rather
average looking stills and allows users to record lag-free 15 second video clips in 720p.
These are saved to the Gear, with it packing
4 GB of internal storage, while it’s also automatically shared with your smartphone over
Bluetooth.
The smartwatch’s microphones and speaker
enable you to make or answer incoming
calls. Call quality and volume levels are good
if in a quiet room, but if you’re in a noisy
office environment you will struggle to hear
callers and to be heard.

QUICK SPECS
16

More than a pretty (watch) face
Powering the Galaxy Gear is a single-core
(make unspecified) processor clocked at 800
MHz, which is backed up by 512 MB RAM,
translating to good performance on the Gear
when scrolling or using apps. The jewel of
the Gear’s styling is its screen, which is a
1.63" (320 x 320) Super AMOLED. Despite
this low resolution, the small display size
translates into a healthy pixel density of 277
ppi, meaning that text and images appear
crisp onscreen, with viewing angles being
excellent.

Gripes with the Gear
Also onboard is a minuscule 315 mAh Li-ion
battery that unfortunately won’t keep this
watch ticking for more than a couple of days.
We managed two days of usage only when we
switched the Gear off at night between 23:00
and 05:30.
Besides battery life, the biggest issue with the
Gear is that it only worked with two devices
when it came out, namely the Galaxy Note 3
phablet and recently revamped Galaxy Note

Screen
1.63" Super AMOLED, 277 ppi

10.1 tablet. The list is now up to three after
adding the important Galaxy S4, but this is
still a ridiculously low number. A trick is also
missed by the lack of onboard GPS, which
means it won’t track your run when out for a
jog by its own.

The Gear elevates the smartwatch
game thanks to sporting a camera,
and the ability to make and answer
calls.
Our last issue is with the sparsely populated app selection for the Galaxy Gear within
Samsung Apps, with notable exclusions being
Instagram, Vine, WhatsApp, and even official
Twitter and Facebook apps.

Watch this wearable tech space
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear is the best looking
and most feature rich smartwatch on the market,
but is hampered by the sparse app selection,
weak device support, a lack of a real killer feature,
and its high RRP The Gear goes for R4 600,
.
expensive since you can pick up a splash-resistant Sony SmartWatch 2 with a metal strap for
less than R2 500. [HD]

Processor
800 M